The present invention generally relates to camera mounts and in particular to camera mounts for taking panoramic pictures.
The aberrations and distortions that occur at the extremes of a photograph of a panoramic view and the problems of properly aligning film strips to produce a panoramic picture are well known in the prior art. The existing methods of creating panoramic pictures for multi-screen audio-visual slide shows also produce pictures of low quality. The generally-used method of producing slide panoramas involves taking a single slide and enlarging 8 mm by 36 mm sections of the slide onto five slides and thereafter projecting the five slides onto three screens. Since the five slides are second-generation copies of a very small section of an original slide, the resulting quality of the panoramic picture is often poor. Furthermore, if the original slide contains wide-angle distortion, that distortion will also be reproduced in the resulting slide panorama.
The generally-used method of enlarging small sections of a single slide to create a panoramic picture remains valid for many cases, for example, when creating a panoramic picture from an existing slide, from stock file slides, or when using slides shot with long (telephoto) lenses. The camera mount of the present invention however discloses an additional tool for the photographer useful for creating film strips known at the time of shooting to be used to create panoramic pictures.
A panoramic camera is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 2,111,854 to Gasso et al. including adjustable lenses to vary the focal length of the lenses in mathematical proportions to the varying distances of objects in the panoramic view. In U.S. Pat. No. 3,183,810 to Campbell et al. a motor-driven panoramic camera is disclosed having automatic means for stopping the angular sweep of the camera and adjustments for changing the angle of sweep and for making the sweep symmetrical or unsymmetrical.
U.S. Pat. No. 1,282,177 to Blankenhorn discloses a method and apparatus for making panoramic pictures comprising marking the film as the film is advanced and the camera rotated. A camera mount useful for taking stereoscopic or panoramic pictures is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 2,782,700 to Ianuzzi. In the most closely-related prior art known to the Applicant shown in U.S. Pat. No. 1,503,437 to James, a motor-driven camera attachment for taking panoramic pictures is disclosed which moves camera film in relation to the angular rotation of the camera attachment. However, the apparatus of the James invention does not provide the advantages of the present disclosure relating to simplicity of construction and flexibility in operation.